trump

At the inaugural “Shield of the Americas” summit in South Florida, United States President Donald Trump announced the creation of what he calls the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition: a group of a dozen politically aligned countries committed to fighting drug trafficking.

But as he signed a declaration to cement that commitment, Trump signalled that it came with the expectation that cartels would not be confronted with law enforcement action, but instead military might.

“ The only way to defeat these enemies is by unleashing the power of our military. So we have to use our military. You have to use your military,” Trump told the audience of Latin American leaders.

“You have some great police, but they threaten your police. They scare your police. You’re going to use your military.”

Saturday’s summit was the latest step in a larger foreign policy pivot under Trump.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has distanced himself from some of the US’s traditional allies in Europe, instead forging tighter partnerships with right-wing governments around the world.

The attendance at the Shield of the Americas summit reflected that shift. Right-wing leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa, were among the guest list.

But notably absent was top-level leadership from Mexico, the US’s biggest trading partner, and Brazil, the largest country in the region by economy and population.

Both Mexico and Brazil are led by left-wing presidents who have resisted some of Trump’s more hardline policies.

The growing rift between the US and some of its longtime partners was a feature in the brief remarks delivered by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who praised attendees for their cooperation.

“They’re more than allies. They’re friends,” Rubio said of the leaders present.

“At a time when we have learned that oftentimes an ally, when you need them, maybe may not be there for you, these are countries that have been there for us.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, reiterated his view that criminal networks and cartels pose an existential crisis for the entire Western Hemisphere, which he described as sharing the same cultural and religious roots.

“ We share a hemisphere and geography. We share cultures, Western Christian civilisation. We share these things together. We have to have the courage to defend it,” Hegseth said.

A military-first approach

Latin America is one of several areas where Trump has launched military operations since returning to office in January 2025.

His rationale for authorising deadly operations in the region has centred primarily on the illicit drug trade.

Trump has repeatedly argued that Latin American criminal networks pose an imminent threat to national security, through the trafficking of people and drugs across US borders.

Experts in international law have pointed out that drug trafficking is considered a criminal offence — and it is not accepted as justification for acts of military aggression.

But the Trump administration has nevertheless launched lethal military strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America.

Since September, for instance, the Trump administration has conducted at least 44 aerial strikes on maritime vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing nearly 150 people.

The victims’ identities have never been publicly confirmed, nor has evidence been publicly released to justify the deadly strikes.

Some families in Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago have stepped forward to claim the dead as their loved ones, out on a fishing expedition or travelling between islands for informal work.

In Saturday’s remarks, Trump justified the attacks by arguing that cartels and other criminal networks had grown more powerful than local militaries — and therefore necessitated a lethal response.

“Many of the cartels have developed sophisticated military operations. Highly sophisticated, in some cases. They say they’re more powerful than the military in the country,” Trump said.

“Can’t have that. These brutal criminal organisations pose an unacceptable threat to national security. And they provide a dangerous gateway for foreign adversaries in our region.”

He then compared cartels to a disease: “They’re cancer, and we don’t want it spreading.”

A ‘nasty’ operation in Venezuela

In late December and early January, Trump also initiated attacks on Venezuelan soil, again defending his actions as necessary to stop drug traffickers.

The first attack targeted a port Trump linked to the gang Tren de Aragua. The second, on January 3, was a broader offensive that culminated in the abduction and imprisonment of Venezuela’s then-leader, President Nicolas Maduro.

On Saturday, Trump reflected on that military operation, which he characterised as an unmitigated success.

Maduro is currently awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges in New York, though a declassified intelligence report last May cast doubt on Trump’s allegations that the Venezuelan leader directed drug-trafficking operations through groups like Tren de Aragua.

“America’s armed forces also ended the reign of one of the biggest cartel kingpins of all, with Operation Absolute Resolve to bring outlaw dictator Nicolas Maduro to justice in a precision raid,” Trump told Saturday’s summit.

He then described the military operation as “nasty”, though he underscored that no US lives were lost.

The early-morning raid, however, killed at least 80 people in Venezuela, including 32 Cuban military officers, dozens of Venezuelan security forces, and several civilians.

“We went right into the heart. We took them out, and it was nasty. It was about 18 minutes of pure violence, and we took them out,” Trump said of the operation.

Trump has since held up Venezuela as a model for regime change around the world, particularly as it leads a war with Israel against Iran.

Maduro’s successor, interim President Delcy Rodriguez, has so far complied with many of Trump’s demands, including for reforms to the country’s nationalised oil and mining sectors.

Just this week, the two countries re-established diplomatic relations for the first time since 2019, under Trump’s first term as president.

In Saturday’s remarks, however, Trump reiterated that his positive relationship with Rodriguez hinged on her cooperation with his priorities.

“She’s doing a great job because she’s working with us. If she wasn’t working with us, I would not say she’s doing a great job,” he said.

“In fact, if she wasn’t working with us, I’d say she’s doing a very poor job. Unacceptable.”

‘We’ll use missiles’

Trump did, however, express consternation with other presidents in the Latin American region, accusing them of allowing cartels to run amok.

“Leaders in this region have allowed large swaths of territory, the Western Hemisphere, to come under the direct control” of the cartels, Trump said.

“Transnational gangs have taken over, and they’ve run areas of your country. We’re not going to let that happen.”

He even delivered an ominous warning to the summit’s attendees: “Some of you are in danger. I mean, you’re actually in danger. It’s hard to believe.”

Many of the leaders in attendance, including El Salvador’s Bukele, have launched their own harsh crackdowns on gangs in their countries, employing “mano dura” or “iron fist” tactics.

Those campaigns, however, have elicited concerns from human rights groups, who have noted that presidents like Bukele used emergency declarations to suspend civil liberties and imprison hundreds of people, often without a fair trial.

Still, Trump dismissed alternative approaches in Saturday’s speech. Though he did not mention Colombia by name, he was critical of efforts to negotiate for the disarmament of cartels and rebel groups, as Colombian President Gustavo Petro has sought to do.

Instead, he offered to deploy military might throughout the region.

“We’ll use missiles. If you want us to use a missile, they’re extremely accurate — pew! — right into the living room, and that’s the end of that cartel person,” Trump said.

“A lot of countries don’t want to do that. They say, ‘Oh, sure. I’d rather not have that. I’d rather not have it. I believe they could be spoken to.’ I don’t think so.”

A call to ‘eradicate’ Mexico’s cartels

One country he did single out, though, was Mexico. Trump suggested that it had fallen behind other countries in the region in its efforts to combat crime.

“We must recognise the epicentre of cartel violence is Mexico,” he said.

“The Mexican cartels are fueling and orchestrating much of the bloodshed and chaos in this hemisphere, and the United States government will do whatever’s necessary to defend our national security.”

Since the start of his second term, Trump has pressured Mexico to step up its security efforts, threatening tariffs and even the possibility of military action if it does not comply.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has responded by increasing military deployments throughout the country.

In February 2025, for instance, she announced 10,000 soldiers would be sent to the US-Mexico border. For the upcoming FIFA World Cup, her officials have said nearly 100,000 security personnel will be patrolling the streets.

Just last month, her government also launched a military operation in Jalisco to capture and kill the cartel leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, nicknamed “El Mencho”. She has also facilitated the transfer of cartel suspects to the US for trial.

But Trump reemphasised on Saturday his belief that Sheinbaum had not gone far enough, though he called her a “very good person” and a “beautiful woman” with a “beautiful voice”.

“I said, ‘Let me eradicate the cartels,’” Trump said, relaying one of his conversations with Sheinbaum.

“We have to eradicate them. We have to knock the hell out of them because they’re getting worse. They’re taking over their country. The cartels are running Mexico. We can’t have that. Too close to us, too close to you.”

‘Last moments of life’ in Cuba

Trump also used his podium to continue his threats against Cuba’s communist government.

Since the January 3 attack on Venezuela, Trump has increased his “maximum pressure” campaign against the Caribbean island, which has been under a full US trade embargo since the 1960s.

His administration severed the flow of oil and funds from Venezuela to Cuba, and in late January, Trump announced he would impose steep economic penalties on any country that provides the island with oil, a critical resource for the country’s electrical grid.

Already, the country has been struck with widespread blackouts, and the United Nations has warned Cuba is inching closer to humanitarian “collapse”.

But Trump framed the circumstances as progress towards the ultimate goal of regime change in Cuba.

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” he told Saturday’s summit.

“Cuba’s at the end of the line. They’re very much at the end of the line. They have no money, they have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”

He added that he thinks changing Cuba’s government will be “easy” and that a deal could be struck for the transition of power.

“Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is,” Trump said.

But while Trump’s remarks largely focused on governments not represented at the summit, he warned that there could be consequences even for the right-wing leaders in attendance.

Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” coalition comes as he seeks to bring the whole of Latin America in line with US priorities. It’s a policy he has dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine”, a riff on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which claimed the Western Hemisphere as the US’s sphere of influence.

To Trump, that means ousting rival powers like China as they seek to forge relationships and economic ties with Latin America. Trump has even mused about retaking the Panama Canal, based on his allegation that the Chinese have too much control in the area.

“As these situations in Venezuela and Cuba should make clear, under our new doctrine — and this is a doctrine — we will not allow hostile foreign influence to gain a foothold in this hemisphere,” Trump said.

He then made a pointed remark to Panama’s president, Jose Raul Mulino, who was in the audience.

“That includes the Panama Canal, which we talked about. We’re not going to allow it.”

WASHINGTON — Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on Jan. 6, 2021, and the officers who fought and were injured defending it that day.

Steps from the Capitol’s West Front, where the worst of the violence occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because the Senate voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had delayed putting it up. Many Republicans had balked at installing the plaque.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the plaque says. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. Saturday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) led the effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack and insurrection and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. “We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,” he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Trump’s supporters before eventually pushing them out of the building.

The mob of rioters who violently pushed past police and broke in were echoing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden’s victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running for safety and vandalized the building before police regained control.

Five police officers and four protesters died as a consequence of the violence. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured.

The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. The president, who has called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” on his first day of his new term granted pardons or commutations to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in the rioting.

Trump was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the insurrection. The Senate did not convict him, and the felony charges were dropped after he was reelected in November 2024.

Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up.

After more than a year of silence — and a lawsuit by two of the officers who fought at the Capitol that day — Johnson said at the beginning of the year that there were technical problems with the statute and the plaque could not be erected.

Tillis went to the Senate floor shortly afterward and passed a resolution, with no objections, to place the plaque on the Senate side.

One of the officers who sued, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, said the lawsuit would continue. Hodges, who was crushed by the rioters in the heavy doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said Saturday that the overnight installation was a “fine stopgap” but that it was not in full compliance of the law. The original statute said that all of the officers’ names should be listed, among other technical specifications.

“The weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering,” Hodges said. “Our lawsuit persists.”

Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Allison Robbert contributed to this report.

March 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced at Saturday’s “Shield of the Americas” summit in Florida that a new military coalition will focus on drug trafficking and cartels.

Trump said at the Doral meeting with 12 Latin American leaders that “America’s Counter Cartel Coalition” will conduct operations against cartels across the region.

At least 17 nations have already signed on to the agreement.

“The heart of our agreement is a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks once and for all,” Trump said. “We’ll get rid of them. We need your help. You have to just tell us where they are.”

Trump had pledged earlier this year to hunt down drug cartels. His pledge was followed by a series of attacks on on alleged narco-terrorist vessels in the Caribbean Sea.

The president’s Saturday remarks also touched on the January capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an operation he described as “18 minutes of pure violence.”

Trump praised Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, whose country re-established diplomatic relations with the United States earlier in the week.

“I mean, she’s doing a great job because she’s working with us,” he said. “If she wasn’t working with us, I would not say she’s doing a great job. In fact, if she wasn’t working with us, I’d say she’s doing a very poor job. Unacceptable.”

The summit was attended by Argentine President Javier Milei, Bolivian leader Rodrigo Paz, Chilean President José Antonio Kast, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Honduran President Tito Asfura, Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña and Trinidad and Tobago President Christine Kangaloo.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Howard Blume and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

She’s blunt. She’s combative. She doesn’t go along to get along.

And now, Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is almost certainly getting four more years in office.

On Wednesday, with the deadline past, no one filed a petition to challenge Rodriguez in the June 2 primary election. That makes her the only official at City Hall to be in that coveted position this year.

One caveat: Someone could still run as a write-in, waging a long-shot campaign. But realistically, Rodriguez has a free ride to continue representing her northeast San Fernando Valley district.

Rodriguez, who lives in Mission Hills, said she had been prepping for “another fight,” raising money and giving endorsement interviews. Now, she’s started talking about what her third and final term could look like.

“Giddyup. Everyone better buckle up,” she said, cackling.

For an elected official, nothing can bolster one’s confidence like a reelection victory or two. Newly elected council members tend to keep a low profile their first few years. The longer they stay, the more outspoken they become.

Rodriguez, on the other hand, has been willing to speak her mind for quite some time.

She’s been a longstanding critic of Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program, which moves homeless people indoors. She has pushed, without success, for the city to yank its money from the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. Last fall, she told a mayoral aide that Bass’ team “botched” the Palisades fire recovery in the first few months.

Rodriguez frequently expresses her views in vivid terms, and in ways that can annoy her colleagues.

Last year, she warned a proposal to hike the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour would trigger job losses, leaving the city with “the best paid unemployed workforce in America.”

She denounced the city’s plan to upgrade the Convention Center, saying the council was continuing to “fund failure.” She regularly drops the phrase “merry go round from hell” — shorthand for her struggle to get her colleagues to pull out of LAHSA, the city-county homeless agency that’s been the subject of blistering audits.

With the election approaching, the zingers have only gotten zingier.

Six weeks ago, City Councilmember Nithya Raman launched a last-minute bid to rewrite Measure ULA, the city’s tax on high-end property sales, saying it had chilled development of much-needed apartments. Raman wanted her proposal to go on the June ballot but failed to garner support from her colleagues, who said it hadn’t been vetted.

Rodriguez, in a screed delivered on the council floor, compared Raman to “the arsonist that comes showing up as a firefighter.”

That was a not-so-veiled reference to the fact that Raman promoted Measure ULA in 2022 — and downplayed concerns that it would affect housing production.

“Ms. Raman, you supported and endorsed the false notion to voters that [Measure ULA] was going to be the panacea — without study, without any of the verified proof,” she said. “We knew that these were the implications.”

Raman, in a statement on Friday, said she endorsed Measure ULA after reading through research suggesting that the tax, which generates money for housing programs, would not affect housing production. Newer analysis, she said, found that the measure “indeed resulted in less investment in multi-family housing.”

“That is a huge concern to me and should be to everyone in L.A., a City that is still very much facing a housing shortage,” said Raman, who is now running for mayor. “I am willing to take some heat to get the best outcomes for the City and to secure support for these crucial revenues.”

Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., a San Fernando Valley-based business group, said he appreciates Rodriguez’s direct approach, even when he disagrees with her.

“A lot of councilmembers, if they don’t agree with you, they won’t even meet with you,” he said. “There are council members who say they’ll listen and take [an issue] under advisement, even though they’ve made up their mind. They just don’t want to tell someone to their face that they disagree.”

Rodriguez’s approach doesn’t always reap political dividends.

Last year, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson removed her from a number of high-profile committees, including those that oversee homeless programs, public safety and the city budget.

Despite her warnings, the council hiked the minimum wage for tourism workers and approved the $2.6-billion Convention Center project. She championed the creation of a new youth development department, only for it to wind up on the chopping block in last year’s budget.

Rodriguez, 52, grew up in Arleta, the daughter of a U.S. Marine veteran who served in Vietnam while holding a green card, and later became one of the city’s earliest Latino firefighters in the wake of a federal consent decree on hiring. She graduated from San Fernando High School in 1992, one year after Assemblymember Luz Rivas and two years after U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla.

She worked for former Mayor Richard Riordan and former Councilmember Mike Hernandez and later ran unsuccessfully against former Councilmember Richard Alarcon. She joined the Board of Public Works in 2013, running for council a second time four years later.

With a third term looming, Rodriguez wants to take a program she launched in her district — moving homeless people out of RVs and into housing — and take it citywide. She’s excited about expanding a program for fixing sidewalks that also teaches job skills to young people.

Rodriguez acknowledged that her stances, and her remarks, can rub people the wrong way, noting that it’s “more comfortable to walk in a group than to walk alone.” Nevertheless, she doesn’t intend to change her approach.

“I know what I’m here to do, and I’m just going to continue,” she said.

State of play

— SCRAMBLE FOR SIGNATURES: The deadline for candidates for city office to turn in petitions arrived on Wednesday, and the signatures are still being counted. By Friday, 12 mayoral candidates had qualified to run against Bass, including Raman, reality television star Spencer Pratt and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller. The City Clerk’s office is still reviewing the petitions of several other mayoral hopefuls, all of them political unknowns.

— ANOTHER FREE RIDE: L.A. Unified School board member Kelly Gonez is also running unopposed in the June 2 election. On Wednesday, her one potential opponent, JP Perron, announced he was dropping out. Like Rodriguez, Gonez represents part of the San Fernando Valley.

— A HELPING HAND: For a hot minute, things were touch and go for Sylvia Robledo, a former council aide looking to unseat Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. After filing her petitions, Robledo learned Tuesday that she was short 14 voter signatures. Raul Claros, one of her rivals in the race, stepped in to help close the gap, gathering some signatures himself. “People want options,” he said later on Instagram. “People want anybody but Eunisses Hernandez.”

Two of Robledo’s other opponents — entrepreneur Nelson Grande and nonprofit executive Maria Lou Calanche — added their own names to her petition. On Wednesday, she qualified for the ballot.

“We may have a different vision or path, but we all want new leadership,” Robledo said.

— JANISSE JETS OFF: The top executive at the Department of Water and Power, Janisse Quiñones, announced this week that she has taken a job as CEO of a privately owned electrical company in her native Puerto Rico. Quiñones, who was hired at $750,000 a year, faced criticism over the DWP’s decision to drain a reservoir shortly before the Palisades fire broke out. Her first day in the new job is March 30.

— TRUMP ON LINE 1: Bass spoke on the phone this week with President Trump to request FEMA reimbursements for the Palisades fire, KNX News reported. Bass told the station that the president was “very receptive.”

“I was reluctant to call because there are a few other things going on, like what’s happening overseas, and I didn’t think, given all that was happening internationally, that he would actually return my call,” she told the station.

— OVERDUE BILLS: The county Board of Supervisors voted this week to fund a financial review of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, after finding that the agency owes tens of millions of dollars to nonprofits that oversee interim housing for the region’s homeless population. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said her phone was “ringing off the hook” from groups needing to get paid by LAHSA.

— TIT FOR TAT: Meanwhile, the long-running feud between Bass and Horvath continued to boil over, with the two taking digs at each other over the future of the region’s homeless programs. Bass, in a statement, said pulling out of LAHSA too quickly would bring “unintended consequences” and leave “more Angelenos to die on our streets.”

“When the County created their new Department of Homeless Services and Housing, they also created a $300 million gap, which they had to close by prioritizing bureaucracy rather than services,” Bass said.

Horvath shot back, saying she is already conferring with council members on a strategy to have the city pay the county to provide homeless services.

“I’m ready to work with the City Council and show the Mayor what locking arms actually looks like,” she said, swiping one of Bass’ signature phrases.

— PALISADES BOWL IN PERIL: The owners of a mobile home park destroyed last year in the Palisades fire are marketing the site as a potential “mixed use” project — housing plus commercial space, which would result in permanent displacement of residents. City Councilmember Traci Park said any developer looking to take the sellers up on their offer should “pound sand.”

“What we are interested in doing is restoring this property as a mobile home park for the people who were there and remain displaced,” she said.

— PURSUING POT PROCEEDS: L.A. cannabis companies owe the city more than $400 million in business taxes, late fees and interest. Hoping to recoup $30 million of that total, the council voted this week to set up an amnesty program for those pot businesses that still owe money and haven’t already shuttered.

— JAIL DEATHS: Ten people have died in L.A. County jails so far this year, putting the county on track for another record-setting year of in-custody deaths. Now, county supervisors want the Sheriff’s Department to reverse that trend by beefing up safety checks, more closely monitoring cameras and increasing access to the overdose reversal drug Naloxone.

— FOR FLOCK’S SAKE: The Police Commission wants to know how data captured by the controversial license plate reader Flock Safety are being stored and shared. Commissioner Jeff Skobin asked for the information following reports that federal agencies had repeatedly accessed Flock’s surveillance data as part of Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to fight homelessness went to a stretch of Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood, underneath the 170 Freeway. About three dozen people went inside, according to Bass’ team.
• On the docket next week: The council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee meets Tuesday to take up a proposal to hike the penalties for putting up illegal billboards and other unpermitted signs.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

In recent days, tensions over the U.S. war in Iran have steadily mounted.

Polls have shown the campaign is widely unpopular. An entire flank of Trump’s MAGA base has criticized it as a clear departure from the “America First” mantra Trump has long espoused. Leaders within the Trump administration have pushed against claims it was about regime change, framing it instead as a necessary response to imminent threats.

Trump, meanwhile, has struck a decidedly defiant tone — offering few of the reassurances or rationalizations that past presidents have offered in the initial stages of war, and sounding more unbothered than embattled.

He has lamented American casualties but also seemed to shrug them off — along with additional deaths he expects to come and potential attacks on the U.S. homeland — as the simple cost of war, saying, “Some people will die.”

He has ignored concerns the war will turn into another unending Middle East quagmire, while openly flirting with taking over Cuba too.

Undermining his administration’s own messaging that the war is not about regime change, Trump wrote in a social media post Friday that there would be “no deal” with Iran without “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and new Iranian leadership “ACCEPTABLE” to him.

Sticking a thumb in the eye of his “America First” defectors, he said the U.S. and its allies are going to “work tirelessly” to make Iran “economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before,” adding, “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)”

In the last week, Trump has instigated or been forced to navigate a stunning cascade of political threats. In addition to attacking Iran, he fired his Homeland Security secretary in charge of his signature immigration campaign, faced newly detailed allegations — which he denied — that he sexually assaulted a child alongside Jeffrey Epstein, saw his attorney general subpoenaed by fellow Republicans in Congress, and watched American jobs numbers drop as gas prices spiked.

And yet, Trump has also managed to avoid complex questions about those issues — the most pressing before his administration — and despite Democrats and some of his own supporters lashing out over them.

“I’ve seen a lot of Presidents fall short of their promises but I’ve never seen any President just doing the opposite of everything promised on purpose. Prices, Epstein, wars. Just absolutely racing to betray his voters,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X.

“This is Israel’s war, this is not the United States’ war. This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives, to make the United States safer or richer,” said Tucker Carlson, one of Trump’s longtime allies.

Carlson said Trump committed U.S. forces to fighting in Iran for no other reason than because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “demanded it,” even though it “certainly wasn’t a good idea for the United States” and the Trump administration had “no real plan” for replacing the Iranian leadership it has now toppled.

The White House defended Trump’s actions across the board in statements to The Times on Friday.

On Iran, it said Trump “is courageously protecting the United States from the deadly threat posed by the rogue Iranian regime — and that is as America First as it gets.” On departing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, it said Trump “has assembled the most talented and competent cabinet in history,” and “continues to have faith in his Administration.”

On the economy, they said the Trump administration “is doing its part to unleash robust, private sector-led economic growth with tax cuts and deregulation,” and that Trump “has already initiated robust action” to control oil prices even amid the Iran war. And on the Epstein files, they said the latest claims unveiled “are completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence.”

Trump has also spoken out in defense of his handling of the various crises facing his administration — but not nearly with the sort of detail and solemnity that wartime presidents usually speak, experts said.

At his only public event on Friday — a nearly two-hour round-table with national leaders and sporting officials about college athletics — he ridiculed members of the media who asked about Iran and Noem.

“What a stupid question that is to be asking at this time,” he said, when asked about reports that Russia was helping Iran target and attack Americans there. “We’re talking about something else.”

When pressed as to why he was spending so much time talking about college sports when so much else is going on in the country and the world, Trump briefly talked about Iran — saying “people are very impressed by our military” and that the U.S. is now “more respected than we’ve ever been” — before concluding the event.

Jennifer Mercieca, a political historian and communications professor at Texas A&M and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” said she was surprised Trump didn’t make a stronger case for going to war in Iran during his recent State of the Union speech, and that he hasn’t been more aggressive about making the case for war since, including by using traditional language about bolstering American values around the world.

“In comparison to other presidents in a similar situation trying to lead a nation into war, that is surprising to me — and unusual,” she said.

Also unusual is the low public support for the war, Mercieca said, given that, since World War II, there has generally been high public approval for U.S. war efforts at their start.

Mercieca said she wonders if there is a correlation between Trump’s not providing a more vigorous rationale for the war and the low public approval for it — or perhaps between the low approval and the brash descriptions of the war as a merciless campaign of destruction and vengeance from others in the administration, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

She said Hegseth and others have shown a “lack of decorum, a lack of honor or dignity [in] their way of behaving, especially when we’re talking about warfare and human lives.”

Jack Rakove, a Stanford University professor emeritus of history and political science, said Trump’s posture is fitting with his character since he first entered politics and before, as he “can never take responsibility for anything that appears to be a mistake” and is “obsessed with the idea of appearing tough and tough-minded.”

Rakove said he does not believe, as some critics have suggested, that Trump launched the war in Iran specifically to distract from the Epstein files, which as of Thursday included newly released FBI descriptions of several interviews in which a woman accused Trump and Epstein of sexual assault in the 1980s when she was a child. Her accusations have not been verified.

But Rakove said he does wonder to what degree Trump is consciously pushing chaos in order to ensure that no one detrimental issue for him politically captures the public’s attention for too long.

Mercieca said Trump has always been “uniquely good at controlling the public conversation,” but that power has been tested recently by the Epstein files — which have held the public’s attention despite his repeatedly saying that “we should move on from that, that we should stop talking about it, that he’s been exonerated.”

She said Trump’s instinct in the current moment to push ahead aggressively despite waning support for his economic policies, his immigration policies and his war in Iran could be related to his desire to return people’s attention to his agenda, but is also in line with his long-held desire to go down in history — including by making big moves.

“I think he’s very much trying to leave his mark on the White House, I think he’s trying to leave his mark on the nation, I think he’s trying to leave his mark on the world, and I think war is a way that leaders have traditionally done that throughout history,” she said.

As the United States and Israel’s war on Iran unfolds over the coming days and weeks, the scale of the fallout for the global economy will be measured at the petrol pump.

The biggest threat the conflict poses to global economic health lies in rising energy prices.

Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian attacks on key energy production facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia have paralysed a substantial chunk of the world’s energy supply.

For a global economy already rattled by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and what many see as his unravelling of the post-World War II order, much now depends on how long the disruption lasts.

A sustained surge in energy prices would drive up the cost of everyday goods.

Central banks would then likely raise borrowing costs to curb inflation, dampening consumer spending and dragging down economic growth.

“It’s really a question on how long the disruption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz lasts and whether there will be destruction of physical assets,” said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, an analyst at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

“For the moment, the market is pricing a short disruption and no destruction. But that may change in the future. We simply do not know right now how this whole crisis ends.”

While Iran’s threats to shipping have halted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil, crude prices have seen relatively modest gains so far.

Brent crude hovered about $84 a barrel on Friday morning, US time, up about 15 percent compared with pre-conflict prices.

That gain pales in comparison with past crises.

During the 1973-74 oil embargo led by OPEC’s Arab members, prices quadrupled in just three months.

Since then, the world’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil has declined substantially.

Today, the US is the biggest producer globally, producing some 13 million barrels a day, more than Iran, Iraq and the UAE combined, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

But if supply disruptions extend beyond a few weeks, oil prices could rise precipitously.

Storage capacity constraints

The seven oil-producing Gulf nations – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – are likely to run out of crude oil storage capacity in less than a month if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, according to an analysis by JPMorgan Chase.

With storage capacity depleted, producers would be forced to cut production.

“While there will be some capacities elsewhere, and some options to use pipelines rather than shipping, it is incredibly difficult to replace the sheer volume as we are talking about an average of 20 million barrels of oil per day that usually cross the Strait of Hormuz,” said Sarah Schiffling, a supply chains expert at the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki.

“This important maritime chokepoint provides very significant leverage in the global economy.”

This week, Goldman Sachs analysts estimated that global oil prices will likely hit $100 a barrel – a threshold not seen since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – if shipping through the waterway stays at the current reduced levels for five weeks.

In an interview published by The Financial Times on Friday, Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi warned that producers in the region could halt production within days and that oil could soar as high as $150 a barrel.

Such increases would reverberate through the global economy.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that global economic growth is reduced by 0.15 percent for every 10 percent rise in oil prices.

The pain would not be spread evenly.

About 80 percent of the oil shipped through the strait goes to Asia.

India, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, which are all highly dependent on foreign energy imports, would be among the economies most vulnerable to spikes in the cost of necessities such as food and fuel.

“The effect would be felt in Asia and Europe in particular,” said Lutz Kilian, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“Some countries, such as China, have ample oil reserves to help weather a temporary outage, while others do not.”

Liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is also shipped through the strait and has fewer alternative suppliers outside the region than crude oil, has already seen much steeper price rises.

European prices of LNG surged by as much as 50 percent on Monday after state-run QatarEnergy, which ships about one-fifth of global supply through the waterway, announced a halt to production following drone attacks blamed on Iran.

“Gas will be more impacted because the market was still relatively tight and stocks are low in Europe as we are at the end of winter; also, there is no replacement for the LNG lost,” Corbeau said.

Prolonged uncertainty

With US President Donald Trump signalling that he intends to continue the assault on Iran for at least several more weeks, the extent to which Tehran is willing – or able – to keep the strait closed will be critical to the global economy.

At least nine commercial vessels have been targeted in attacks in or near the strait since the start of the conflict, prompting multiple insurance firms to cancel coverage for vessels in the Gulf.

While traffic through the strait has not halted, it is down about 90 percent compared with normal levels, according to ship tracker MarineTraffic.

“The uncertainty itself is probably the most dangerous part. Supply chains hate uncertainty,” Schiffling said.

“It is possible to plan for almost anything, but not knowing what will happen makes it really challenging to adapt operations.”

On Wednesday, Trump said he had ordered the US International Development Finance Corporation to start insuring shipping lines in the region in order to keep trade flowing.

Trump also said the US Navy could begin escorting vessels through the strait if necessary.

“As long as Israel and the US are able to suppress Iranian drone and missile attacks in the strait to the point that the bulk of the oil tankers gets through, and as long as the United States provides back-up insurance for shippers and their cargo, the global economy may make it through this war without a recession,” Kilian said.

“On the other hand, if there is a severe disruption of oil traffic, the economic costs will grow the longer the disruption lasts.”

March 6 (UPI) — The Department of Justice released new FBI documents Thursday that describe several interviews with a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a young teen.

The pages had been withheld from the other documents from the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Officials said they were held back because they mistakenly believed they were duplicates.

The 16 pages of notes describe three interviews that the FBI conducted in 2019 with the woman, who said she was sexually abused by Epstein and Trump when she was between the ages of 13 years and 15 years in the 1980s.

There are also two pages from an intake form that document the initial call to the FBI from a friend who reported the woman’s claims.

Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019.

The House Oversight Committee voted Wednesday to subpoena U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files, which are legally required to be released to the public.

The Justice Department posted on X that it identified about a dozen other documents that were “incorrectly coded as duplicative.”

Federal prosecutors in Florida also determined that five prosecution memos that had been labeled privileged could be redacted and released.

NPR reported that it conducted an investigation that found 53 pages that appeared to be missing from the public release database.

There are still 37 pages missing, NPR said, including notes from the interviews, a law enforcement report and license records.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said in a statement that they applauded the release of the interviews but still criticized the department for its handling.

“But let’s be clear — this White House cover-up is ongoing. Millions of pages still remain concealed from the public and our committee,” said Sara Guerrero, spokesperson for Oversight Democrats.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NPR Friday that Trump has been “totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein files.”

“These are completely baseless accusations, backed by zero credible evidence, from a sadly disturbed woman who has an extensive criminal history,” Leavitt wrote to NPR.

“The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden‘s department of justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them — because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. As we have said countless times, President Trump has been totally exonerated by the release of the Epstein Files,” she wrote.

We’re in the early weeks of Lent, the 40 days when Christians are called to rededicate themselves to good — and the Trump administration seems to be having a good time making its war with Iran seem like a bunch of tweens playing a game of “Call of Duty.”

Where Jesus called on believers to go through life as meekly as possible, the White House keeps pumping out social media posts mixing footage of American forces blowing up the Iranian regime with everything from SpongeBob SquarePants to Iron Man to “Grand Theft Auto.” While Proverbs warned “every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — who loves to flash his bad tattoos that reference the Crusades — gives superlative-drenched speeches on the supposed glories of this war that make him sound more bloodthirsty than Count Dracula.

Even though Christ mandated that people not loudly pray in public “like the hypocrites,” President Trump gladly let a gaggle of pastors lay hands over him in the Oval Office this week as one intoned God “continue to give our President the strength that he needs to lead our nation as we come back to one nation under God.”

Which God: Yahweh or Trump?

During last month’s National Prayer Breakfast, the president bragged that because of him, “religion’s back now hotter than ever before.” Perhaps the most un-Christian man to ever serve as commander in chief has continually wrapped himself in the mantle of Jesus — and too many Christians have ignored the Good Book’s repeated warnings against false prophets and cheered him on.

Flannery O’Connor could have written an entire novel on Christian hucksters just from Year One of the second coming of the Trump administration.

As the Iran war ratchets up with no end in sight, this devotion to Trump is veering into idolatry.

Pastor Greg Laurie — most famous for holding Harvest Crusade revivals in Southern California for the past generation — wrote online that Trump’s Iran campaign “is cause for us to sit up and pay attention” because he feels it lines up with End Times prophecy about the Middle East descending into war just before the Second Coming. The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation revealed it has received hundreds of complaints from troops about their superiors claiming that what’s going on is biblically ordained.

Meanwhile, South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that what’s happening “is a religious war” that “will set the course of the Middle East for a thousand years” — the exact time period that the Book of Revelation stated Christ will reign until Satan returns. Some Trump supporters have even compared their savior to Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who freed the Israelites from the yolk of the Babylonians and of whom the Book of Isaiah called God’s “anointed” and would “subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor.”

The Bible is not all kumbaya. But from the Old Testament to the New, it consistently preaches for the faithful to humble themselves, to help the poor and downtrodden. Trump’s version of Christianity instead preaches no mercy for those against him, demands followers exalt him above everything, celebrates the gaudy instead of the godly.

This Lent is magnifying his apostasy like never before.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine speak during a press briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday in Washington.

(Konstantin Toropin / Associated Press)

It’s a time to fast from our excesses; Trump continues to push forth a White House redesign that will make the Palace of Versailles look as flashy as a mud hut. Those of us who partake in Lent are asked to repent of our sins; Trump is doubling down on them like they’re McDonald’s fries. We are supposed to reflect on our wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness from the Almighty and those we wronged — has Trump ever done that?

We’re also supposed to practice almsgiving and assist those less fortunate than ourselves as a way of honoring Christ, who pointed out that giving so it costs you is the only way to give. Trump has always brayed that he’s ultimately looking out for the common man — but instead of helping the millions of people whom his economy was already leaving behind before the Iran campaign, he’s shrugging off their woes and asking Americans to buckle up and weather price spikes and simply believe in him.

Or is that Him?

Conservative Christian leaders have continually landed on the wrong side of American history, from slavery to imperialism, Jim Crow to women’s rights. That’s why it’s not surprising — but still disappointing — that a Pew Research Center poll released earlier this year found 69% of white evangelicals think Trump has done a good job. Fifty-two percent of white Catholics feel the same, compared with just 23% of Latino Catholics, even though Pope Leo XIV has consistently decried American foreign and domestic policy.

Lent also is the time that Christians remember that the pain of Christ’s death leads to the hope that is Easter. That’s why for this Lent, may Christians repent of Trump like never before.

War has always been a time for propaganda, of demonizing the enemy and pumping up your side. It is a sad, tragic affair, with death and carnage and endless mourning. Children die. War is not a thing to be celebrated, even if it were necessary. And there’s a big if around this latest one, even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei deserved his downfall and Iranians in their country and abroad rightfully celebrate.

But history’s greatest warriors know — to quote the conclusion of the Oscar-winning biopic “Patton” — that glory is fleeting. Trump, Hegseth and their ilk are not them. They are the men that Psalms asked God to deliver us from, the warmongers who “imagine mischiefs in their heart” and “continually” seek violence. To see how this administration and its supporters are preening right now reminds me of what Johnny Cash once sung: sooner or later, God‘s gonna cut you down.

Let’s just hope the rest of us are spared when that happens. If you pray, please do. (And not to Trump).

Lionel Messi has been criticised for meeting US President Donald Trump and applauding his latest brief on the Iran war at a White House event honouring the Argentinian superstar and his Inter Miami team.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that the United States would accept nothing short of Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” signaling that the possibility of regime change may be emerging as an objective as the expanding war in the Middle East entered its seventh day.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said negotiations with Iran were off the table and that he wants to have a say on who will be Iran’s next leader once they capitulate.

“After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before,” Trump wrote.

The comments mark one of the clearest indications yet that Trump is contemplating regime change inside Iran even as administration officials have said that is not a goal of the war.

Mojtaba Khamenei — the son of the former leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — has emerged as a leading candidate to succeed his father. But Trump has said he would be an “unacceptable” choice, and in an interview with Politico, the president said he expects his administration will “work with them to help them make the proper choice.”

The comments come as the war continued to escalate across the region, with Israeli forces carrying out attacks on targets in Tehran and in Beirut and Iranian forces launching missile and drone attacks against Israel and Gulf countries. The Israeli military also said it hit an area in Tehran where it said Iran had secretly moved some nuclear activities to underground bunkers.

As the fighting intensified, the White House paired its policy statement on the war with an unusual online messaging campaign that featured Hollywood movies and video games to promote Trump’s war efforts.

In a 31-second video posted on the official White House account on X, a series of clips featured Russell Crowe in “Gladiator,” Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” and Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” with the caption: “JUSTICE AMERICAN WAY” with an American flag and fire emojis.

Another video montage to market the administration’s efforts in Iran used clips from the video game “Grand Theft Auto” with one of its characters saying: “Oh s—, here we go again.”

The tone of the social media campaign highlights the administration’s effort to frame the conflict in dramatic and patriotic terms as questions grow about its potential human toll.

In an interview with Time, Trump once again acknowledged the possibility of U.S. casualties — not just abroad but at home.

Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump said “I guess.”

“You know, we expect some things,”Trump said. “Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”

Trump’s response drew swift criticism from congressional Democrats, a majority of whom have tried to rein in Trump’s efforts through legislative action to no avail in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was offended by the president’s “I guess” retort to the question of domestic attacks.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. We have totally unserious, completely incompetent people taking us into mindless deadly war,” Murphy said.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review.

The department said last week that it was working to determine if any records were improperly withheld after several news organizations reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public didn’t include some files documenting a series of interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump.

The accuser was interviewed by the FBI four times as it sought to assess her account but a summary of only one of those interviews had been included in the publicly released files.

On Thursday, the department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with other investigative documents related to the disgraced financier, who killed himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019.

“As we have consistently done, if any member of the public reported concerns with information in the library, the Department would review, make any corrections, and republish online,” the department said in a post on X.

Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. The department noted in January that some of the documents contain “untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”

The new disclosures come as Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi faces continued turmoil over the department’s handling of the files released under a law passed by Congress after months of public and political pressure. Five Republicans on the House Oversight Committee joined Democrats in voting Wednesday to subpoena Bondi, demanding that she answer questions under oath in a sign of mounting frustration among members of the president’s own party.

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents or over-redacting files, or in some cases, not redacting enough. In some cases, the department inadvertently released nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

Department officials have defended their handling of the files, saying they took pains to release the files as quickly as possible under the law while also protecting victims. Department officials have said errors were inevitable given the volume of the materials, the number of lawyers viewing the files and the speed at which the department had to release them. The department has said it’s entitled to withhold records that exposed potential abuse victims, were duplicates or protected by legal privileges, or related to an ongoing criminal investigation.

Some of the new records published Thursday pertained to a woman who contacted the FBI shortly after Epstein’s 2019 arrest and claimed that a man named “Jeff” living in Hilton Head, South Carolina, had raped her there in the 1980s when she was around 13 years old. The woman told the agents she didn’t know the man’s identity at the time, but decades later concluded he was Jeffrey Epstein when a friend texted her his photo from a news story.

In a follow-up interview a month later, the woman added a host of other claims, including that Epstein had schemed to have her mother sent to prison, beaten her, arranged sexual encounters with other men and once flew her to either New Jersey or New York, where she claimed to have bitten Trump after he tried to sexually assault her.

Agents spoke with the woman two more times, at one point asking her to provide more detail on her supposed interactions with Trump, but reported that she declined to answer additional questions and broke off contact. There’s no indication that Epstein ever lived in South Carolina and it was unclear whether Trump and Epstein knew each other during the time period involved.

The woman’s report was one of a number of uncorroborated, sometimes fantastical, reports that federal agents received from members of the public alleging misconduct by Trump and other famous people in the months and years after Epstein’s arrest.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

Over the past two decades, China has quietly eclipsed the United States as the dominant trading partner in parts of Latin America.

But since taking office for a second term, United States President Donald Trump has pushed to reverse Beijing’s advance.

That includes through aggressive manoeuvres directed at China’s allies in the region.

Already, the Trump administration has stripped officials in Costa Rica, Panama and Chile of their US visas, reportedly due to their ties to China.

It has also threatened to take back the Panama Canal over allegations that Chinese operatives are running the waterway. And after invading Venezuela and abducting President Nicolas Maduro, the US forced the country to halt oil exports to China.

But on Saturday, Trump is taking a different approach, welcoming Latin American leaders to his Mar-a-Lago estate for an event dubbed the “Shield of the Americas” summit.

How he plans to persuade leaders to distance themselves from one of the region’s largest economic partners remains unclear.

But experts say the high-level meeting could signal that Washington is prepared to put concrete offers on the table.

Securing meaningful commitments from Latin American leaders will take more than a photo op and vague promises, according to Francisco Urdinez, an expert on regional relations with China at Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University.

Even among Trump’s allies, Urdinez believes significant economic incentives are required.

“What they’re really hoping is that Washington backs up the political alignment with tangible economic benefits,” he said.

‘Reinforcing the Donroe Doctrine’

Already, the White House has confirmed that nearly a dozen countries will be represented at the weekend summit.

They include conservative leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Mexico and Brazil, the region’s largest economies, have been notably left out. Both are currently led by left-leaning governments.

In a post on social media, the Trump administration framed the event as a “historic meeting reinforcing the Donroe Doctrine”, the president’s plan for establishing US dominance over the Western Hemisphere.

Part of that strategy involves assembling a coalition of ideological allies in the region.

But rolling back Chinese influence in a region increasingly reliant on its economy will not be an easy feat, according to Gimena Sanchez, the Andes director at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research and advocacy group.

The US “is trying to get countries to agree that they’re not going to have China be one of their primary trading partners, and they really can’t at this point”, Sanchez said.

“For most countries, China is either their top, second or third trading partner.”

China, after all, has the second-largest economy in the world, and it has invested heavily in Latin America, including through infrastructure projects and massive loans.

The Asian giant has emerged as the top trading partner in South America in particular, with bilateral trade reaching $518bn in 2024, a record high for Beijing.

The US, however, remains the biggest outside trade force in Latin America and the Caribbean overall, due in large part to close relations with its neighbour, Mexico.

As of 2024, US imports from Latin America jumped to $661bn, and its exports were valued at $517bn.

Rather than choosing sides, though, many countries in the region are trying to strike a balance between the two powers, Sanchez explained.

Still, she added that the US cannot come empty-handed to this weekend’s negotiations.

“If the US is very boldly telling countries to cut off strengthening ties with China”, Sanchez emphasised that “the US is going to have to offer them something.”

What’s on the table?

Trump has already extended economic lifelines to Latin American governments politically aligned with his own.

In the case of Argentina, for instance, Trump announced in October a $20bn currency swap, meant to increase the value of the country’s peso.

He also increased the volume of Argentinian beef permitted to be imported into the US, shoring up the country’s agricultural sector, despite pushback from US cattle farmers.

Trump has largely tied those economic incentives to the continued leadership of political movements favourable to his own.

The $20bn swap, for instance, came ahead of a key election for Argentinian President Javier Milei’s right-wing party, which Trump supports.

Isolating China from resources in Latin America could also play to Trump’s advantage as he angles for better trade terms with Beijing.

A show of hemispheric solidarity could give Trump extra leverage as he travels to Beijing in early April to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Urdinez pointed out.

Then there’s the regional security angle. The US has expressed particular concern about China’s control of strategic infrastructure in Latin America and the critical minerals it could exploit in the region to bolster its defence and technology capabilities.

Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, for instance, are believed to hold the world’s largest deposits of lithium, a metal necessary for energy storage and rechargeable batteries.

The Trump administration referenced such threats in its national security strategy, published in December.

“Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse,” the strategy document said, blaming the “political alignments between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors”.

But Trump’s security platform nevertheless asserted that Latin American leaders were actively seeking alternatives to China.

“Many governments are not ideologically aligned with foreign powers but are instead attracted to doing business with them for other reasons, including low costs and fewer regulatory hurdles,” the document said.

It argued that the US could combat Chinese influence by highlighting the “hidden costs” of close ties to Beijing, including “debt traps” and espionage.

‘More aspiration than reality’

Henrietta Levin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believes that many Latin American countries would prefer to deepen economic engagement with the US over China.

But in many cases, that hasn’t been an option.

She pointed to Ecuador’s decision to sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with China in 2023 after it failed to negotiate a similar agreement with the US under President Joe Biden.

Some US politicians had opposed the deal as a threat to domestic industries. Others had encouraged Biden to reject it due to alleged corruption in Ecuador’s government.

Critics, though, said the resistance pushed Ecuador into closer relations with China.

“ When Ecuador signed their free trade agreement with China a couple years ago, their leader actually made quite clear that they had wanted an FTA with the US and would’ve preferred that,” said Levin.

“But the US didn’t want to negotiate such an agreement, and China did.”

As a result, Ecuador became the fifth country in Latin America to ink a free trade pact with China, after Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

For Levin, the question looming over this weekend’s summit is whether the Trump administration will step up and provide alternatives to the economic engagement China has already delivered.

Options could include trade agreements, financing for new development and investments with attractive terms.

But without such offers, Urdinez, the Chilean professor, warns that Trump will face limits to his ambitions of checking China’s growth in Latin America.

“Until Washington is willing to fill the economic space it’s asking countries to vacate, the rollback strategy will remain more aspiration than reality,” said Urdinez.

If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they’ll need all the stars to align. This almost never happens, because politics has a way of scrambling the constellations. But on Tuesday, the first star blinked on.

I’m referring to state Rep. James Talarico’s victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. Most political prognosticators agree that Talarico, an eloquent young Democrat who speaks openly about his Christian faith, is their best hope in a red state that Donald Trump won by 14 points.

The second star was Crockett’s conciliatory concession — far from a foregone conclusion after a nasty primary — in which she pledged to “do my part,” adding that “Texas is primed to turn blue, and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

The third star — a vulnerable Republican opponent — has not yet appeared over the Texas sky, although forecasters say it might.

Most observers agree that scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton would be beatable in the general election, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would present a much tougher challenge. Cornyn is the kind of steady, conventional politician who tends to win elections, and so, of course, modern voters are extremely suspicious of him.

In the GOP primary on Tuesday, Cornyn’s 42% share of the vote edged out Paxton by about a point. Unfortunately for Republicans, neither candidate garnered enough votes to avoid a May 26 runoff election.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when a majority of Republican voters choose someone other than the incumbent in the first round of voting, an even greater majority will inevitably break toward the challenger in the runoff. If that happens, Paxton would become the nominee, and Democrats would get their third star to align.

Even better for Democrats — a fourth star, so to speak — would be for this protracted runoff to become a “knife fight,” as one Texas Republican predicted, in which Paxton staggers out of the fight as the battered GOP nominee.

The only problem is that Republicans can see these stars aligning, too.

And while the Texas Senate seat matters a lot on its own, it matters even more in the context of nationwide midterm elections, in which a Texas win would help Democrats take back the Senate.

Enter the cavalry — or, more accurately, President Trump, who is now entering a second war in the span of a week, this one a civil war in the Lone Star State.

The day after the primary, Trump announced that he would be “making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”

Reports suggest Trump may endorse Cornyn in order to save the seat for Republicans. But who knows? Trump is famously unpredictable. And it’s likely he admires Paxton’s ability to survive scandals that would have caused most normal politicians to curl up in the fetal position. As they say, “game recognizes game.”

Whomever he backs, conventional wisdom also says Trump should make his endorsement “soon,” as he promised. That would save Republicans a lot of time and money. But Trump currently has enormous leverage. Right now, people are coming to him, pleading for his support.

Do you think he wants to resolve that situation quickly?

Me neither.

With Trump, you never know what you’re going to get. In 2021, he helped torpedo Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate. The following year he backed football legend Herschel Walker in another Georgia Senate race, which did not exactly work out great. Democrat Raphael Warnock won and holds that seat, though Walker is now ambassador to the Bahamas so that’s something.

This is to say: Trump’s political assistance does not always assist.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s endorsement would be dispositive — and whether he could muscle the other Republican out of the primary race.

Paxton, for example, initially vowed to stay in the race, no matter what. (He later suggested he would “consider” dropping out if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote.)

There’s also this: Trump’s endorsements tend to either be made out of vengeance or to pad the totals of an already inevitable winner, so his track record is probably overrated.

Case in point: While most of his endorsed candidates won their Texas elections, his endorsed candidate for agriculture commissioner lost reelection. And according to the Texas Tribune, “at least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.”

Another issue is that Cornyn needs more than a perfunctory endorsement: He needs a clear, full-throated endorsement.

In a 2022 Missouri Senate race, Trump endorsed “ERIC,” which was awkward because two candidates named Eric were running.

More recently, he endorsed two rival candidates in the same 2026 Arizona gubernatorial race — like betting on both teams in the Super Bowl.

This is all to say that the only thing standing between Texas Democrats and a rare celestial alignment may be the whims of the Republican Party’s one and only star.

Sure, establishment Republicans can beg Trump to quickly step in and settle the race, and maybe he will. But it’s entirely possible the president will find a way to blow up his party’s chances for holding the U.S. Senate — and there’s nothing they can do to stop him.

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Caracas, March 5, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez met Wednesday with US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas to discuss a bilateral agenda focused on energy and mining.

Senior officials from both countries also attended a closed-door meeting, including US Chargé d’Affaires Laura Dogu and Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello. Rodríguez and Burgum later gave a joint press conference.

“We welcomed Burgum to address important aspects related to metallic, non-metallic, strategic and non-strategic minerals,” the acting president told reporters. “We want the Venezuelan people to see the advantage of having good relations with the world and with the United States.”

Rodríguez said that her economic team will soon present a proposal to the National Assembly to “expand” Venezuela’s Mining Law, urging lawmakers to reform it “swiftly” in order to showcase “investment and development opportunities in the mining sector” to both domestic and international business groups.

Venezuela’s current mining legislation was approved in 1999. Rodríguez noted that the government intends to replicate the “win-win formula” of the recent hydrocarbon reform approved on January 29, which introduced wide-reaching benefits for foreign capital in the oil sector.

Under the overhauled legislation, private operators get expanded control over operations, with limited parliamentary oversight and a reduced tax burden.

Rodríguez also thanked US President Donald Trump for a social media post praising the Venezuelan acting president for “doing a great job.” The Venezuelan leader highlighted the US government’s “kind disposition” to work on a “mutually beneficial” cooperation agenda.

For his part, Burgum said that Venezuela is “an extraordinarily rich nation” in oil, gas, and critical minerals, adding that the opportunities for collaboration between the two countries “have no limits.” He serves as chair of the US National Energy Dominance Council as well.

According to the senior White House official, who holds the natural resources portfolio, the potential cooperation could deliver something “truly remarkable” for both the Venezuelan and American people. Burgum’s delegation included representatives from over 20 US and Canadian mining companies, some of them with a past presence in Venezuela.

“These companies are ready to begin,” he said. “I know that [Acting President] Rodríguez, like President Trump, wants to cut bureaucratic red tape so this capital investment can start flowing.”

Among the companies represented in the visit were US firms Peabody Energy—the world’s largest private coal company—Hartree Partners, Orion CMC, Paulson & Co., and Caterpillar Inc., along with Canada’s Lundin Mining Corp and Singapore-based commodities trader Trafigura.

Canadian miner Gold Reserve also announced plans to return to the Caribbean nation and disclosed a 30-day US Treasury license to negotiate with Caracas.

According to Axios, US officials additionally negotiated a multimillion-dollar agreement with Venezuela’s state mining company Minerven to sell up to one metric ton of gold to the US market, currently valued at roughly $165 million.

The deal would require Minerven to supply between 650 and 1,000 kilograms of doré gold bars—a crude alloy of gold and silver with 50 to 90 percent purity—to Trafigura, which would transport the metal to US refineries. The transaction details were not disclosed, including whether Trafigura will deposit payment in US-run accounts in an arrangement similar to the one the Trump administration has imposed for Venezuelan oil exports.

Burgum is the fourth senior US official to visit Venezuela since the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores.

Earlier visits included US Southern Command chief Francis Donovan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and US Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Venezuela possesses vast unexplored and proven mineral reserves, including significant gold, iron, bauxite, diamonds, nickel, and copper deposits. Coltan reserves have likewise been touted in recent years.

According to the International Center for Productive Investment (CIIP)—an agency attached to the Venezuelan vice presidency—the country holds the eighth-largest iron reserves in the world, estimated at 14.7 billion metric tons, as well as more than 321 million tons of bauxite, the raw material used to produce aluminum.

Regarding gold, the CIIP estimates that Venezuela may hold between 2,200 and 8,000 metric tons, which would place the country among the largest gold reserves globally. 

Analysts have also highlighted the possibility of finding rare earth deposits in the South American country. The 17 elements have diverse applications in cutting-edge technology and advanced weapons systems. Washington is currently highly dependent on rare earth imports from China.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

The US House of Representatives has joined the Senate in killing a war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to end his war on Iran. Although the vote was largely symbolic, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane says Democrats are using it to get Republicans on the record.

US president says he’d be ‘all for’ Kurdish ground assault on Iran amid reports that Washington is egging on rebellion.

Donald Trump has expressed public support for a possible Kurdish offensive against Iran as the United States pushes to destabilise the Iranian governing system internally.

“I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it,” the US president told the Reuters news agency on Thursday when asked about the prospects of a Kurdish rebellion in Iran.

Several US media outlets have reported that Trump called leaders in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq to enable Iranian Kurdish groups launch a ground offensive inside Iran.

In his comments on Thursday, Trump declined to say whether the US would provide air support for Kurdish rebels.

The White House had confirmed that the US president contacted Kurdish leaders in Iraq but denied that Trump agreed to a plan to push for an armed uprising by the Kurds in Iran.

“The president has held many calls with partners, allies and leaders in the region, in the Middle East,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday.

“He did speak to Kurdish leaders with respect to our base that we have in northern Iraq.”

US assets in Erbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq have come under repeated Iranian drone and missile attacks since the war started.

Iran is home to millions of Kurds, mostly living in the west of the country.

Kurds represent a sizable ethnic minority in Iraq, Syria and Turkiye, as well.

Earlier this week, Mustafa Hijri, head of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), a prominent Kurdish opposition group, called for desertion from the Iranian army and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“I call upon all aware and freedom-seeking soldiers and personnel across Iran, and especially in Kurdistan, to abandon the barracks and military centres of the IRGC, the army, and other military forces of the regime, to refuse their assigned duties, and to return to the embrace of their families,” Hijri wrote on X.

“This action is important both for preserving their lives in the face of these attacks and as a sign of turning their backs on the regime’s military and repressive forces.”

On several occasions in recent decades, Washington has urged Kurdish groups seeking autonomy to rebel against governments it viewed as hostile in the region, only to cut off support to them or fail to come to their aid when the political situation changes.

Some critics have warned that stoking ethnic tensions in Iran could lead to a civil war that could further destabilise the entire region.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Press TV reported that the IRGC launched missiles and drones at the headquarters of “anti-Iran terrorist groups in the Iraqi Kurdistan region”.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has condemned the Iranian attacks on the region while also “categorically denying reports of playing a role in an offensive against Iran.

“At the same time, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the political parties within it are not part of any campaign to expand the war and tensions in the region,” the KRG said in a statement. “On the contrary, we call for peace and stability in the region.”

But with government troops showing no signs of defection despite thousands of US and Israeli strikes, the Trump administration has struggled to find a prominent friendly force on the ground in Iran.

Despite the US president’s repeated calls for Iranians to rise up against their government, there have been no significant protests since the war began on Saturday.

WASHINGTON — In a major shakeup of the agency at the center of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, President Trump announced Thursday that he was replacing embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who will step down at the end of the month.

Trump said on Truth Social that he will nominate Sen. Markwayne Millin (R-Okla.) to take over the job, two days after Noem was grilled on Capitol Hill by Democrats and some Republicans.

Trump said Noem will become a “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas,” a new security initiative that he said would focus on the Western Hemisphere.

Noem, the former South Dakota governor, is the first Cabinet secretary to leave during Trump’s second term as president. Her departure comes amid intense scrutiny over immigration enforcement tactics since last year that intensified after the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis by immigration agents.

Those killings led to demands for more accountability within the agency, and disagreement over how to rein in the tactics deployed by federal immigration agents, have led to a weeks-long standoff over the agency’s funding.

Since the shutdown, lawmakers from both parties have used a series of contentious oversight hearings to question Noem’s management of the agency. During a hearing Tuesday, the criticism from Republicans was particularly blunt.

“We are an exceptional nation, and one of the reasons we are exceptional is because we expect exceptional leadership, and you’ve demonstrated anything but that,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told Noem.

When Trump announced the shakeup on social media, Noem was speaking at a conference in Nashville. She answered questions from local law enforcement organizations, and did not offer hints that she knew her departure was imminent. She was not asked about her firing during the event.

After the conference ended, Noem thanked Trump for her special envoy appointment, a diplomatic position she said will have her working to curb drugs from coming into the United States.

“I am super excited about this opportunity. It came at not a complete surprise, but it came at a little bit of a surprise,” Mullin told reporters outside the Capitol.

Mullin said he was not expecting the call Thursday, but that he is “ready to get started” and will work to “earn everybody’s vote,” regardless of party affiliation.

“When I go into this position, yes, I am a Republican, yes I am conservative, but the Department of Homeland Security is to keep everybody — regardless of whether you support me , if you don’t support me, regardless of what your thoughts are — I am here to enforce the policies that Congress passed,” Mullin said.

Mullin would need to be confirmed by the Senate, but under federal law is allowed to serve as acting Homeland Security secretary while his nomination is pending.

When the news broke, Republican senators appeared to be congratulating Mullin on the Senate floor as the chamber was conducting business. Meanwhile, Democratic senators applauded the decision to fire Noem but lamented that she will continue to serve in public office.

“The atrocities she oversaw, the falsehoods she peddled, & the corruption she committed — all richly deserve her discharge,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote on X. “President Trump should have made it explicit, rather than disguising it with another position of public trust.”

Noem was also criticized over how her department spent billions of dollars allocated by Congress.

In the congressional hearings this week, lawmakers questioned her on a $200-million ad campaign she oversaw that urged anyone in the U.S. illegally to deport voluntarily.

Noem told the Senate panel on Tuesday that the president approved the campaign, which the White House denied to NBC News.

Early criticism of Noem came last June, as DHS was scaling up raids throughout Los Angeles. During a news conference at the Westwood federal building, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forced to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents after he interrupted Noem to ask her a question.

“If this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question,” Padilla said later. “I can only imagine what they’re doing to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”

Padilla reacted to Noem’s ouster as evidence of public pressure working to hold her to account.

“This is why we don’t give up,” he said.

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said Noem’s departure was long overdue.

“Her tenure, as two congressional hearings this week clearly showed, was defined by chaos, cruelty, corruption, and a refusal to take responsibility for the abuses carried out by federal agents under her watch,” she said. “For immigrant communities across the country, her leadership represented a dangerous escalation of policies that treated families and workers as targets rather than as human beings who contribute to and strengthen this nation.”

Salas said the new Homeland Security secretary must ensure transparency, respect the Constitution and treat immigrants with dignity.

March 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has removed Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and appointed Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., Thursday after she was aggressively grilled by a Senate committee the day before.

Trump announced the change on Truth Social, along with a new job for Noem, naming her “Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida. I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.'”

He praised Noem for her “numerous and spectacular results” in the announcement.

“I am pleased to announce that the Highly Respected United States Senator from the Great State of Oklahoma, Markwayne Mullin, will become the United States Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS), effective March 31, 2026,” he said.

Mullin has been a Senator since 2023 and served in the House from 2013-2023. He is a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Noem faced a combative Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, as they pressed her for answers on several issues the department has been plagued with in the past year.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called her leadership a “disaster” and told her she should resign.

“What we’ve seen is innocent people getting detained that turn out are American citizens,” Tillis said in a heated exchange.

“The fact that you can’t admit to a mistake, which looks like, under investigation, is gonna prove that Ms. [Renee] Good and Mr. [Alex] Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. Law enforcement needs to learn from that. You don’t protect them by not looking after the facts.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., pressed Noem about DHS ads that she starred in, spending $200 million.

The ads were made by a Republican consulting firm that was allegedly created just before submitting bids for the work.

The company is reportedly connected to the husband of Noem’s former spokesperson, though she denied any part in choosing the firm and called the ads “extremely effective.”

“Well they were effective in your name recognition,” Kennedy said. “It troubles me. A fifth to a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money when we’re scratching over every penny and we’re fighting over rescission packages. I just can’t agree.”

Noem told the Senate panel that Trump had authorized the ads.

Kennedy told reporters Thursday that he got a call from the president about her testimony, The New York Times reported.

“Put it this way: His recollection and her recollection are different.”

Mullin told The Times that he has not had time to call Noem, whom he said is a friend.

“She was tasked with a very difficult job,” he said. “I think she has done the best that she could do under the circumstances.”

But he said he believed that there are opportunities to “build off things that didn’t quite go as planned.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he would wait and see if Mullin will be an improvement at DHS but told The Times, “It will be hard to be a downgrade.”

The Department of Homeland Security is in its third week of a shutdown, with Congress expected to vote later Thursday on a funding package.

United States President Donald Trump has announced that he will replace Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin.

In a social media post on Thursday, Trump explained that he had reassigned Noem to be a special envoy for a new security initiative focused on the Western Hemisphere, dubbed the “Shield of the Americas”.

The staffing change, he added, will take effect starting March 31. It marks the first major cabinet-level shake-up of Trump’s second term so far.

Trump praised Noem upon her departure from the cabinet-level post, writing that she “has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!)”

But Noem has played a prominent role in some of the administration’s most controversial immigration policies, and her tenure at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spurred questions about government spending and conflicts of interest.

The announcement that she would be leaving her post comes a day after she faced a grilling from Democrats during congressional hearings this week, with several politicians called for her resignation.

“DHS is supposed to be protecting our residents and upholding constitutional protections. But you’ve turned that on the head. You have actually turned the United States government against its own residents,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat, said during Wednesday’s hearing.

“Yours is a case of failed leadership. Secretary, you need to resign, be fired or be impeached because you don’t have the right to lead this agency.”

The announcement of Noem’s removal also comes as DHS continues to weather a partial government shutdown.

Democrats have opposed approving new funding for the department in response to deadly shootings involving immigration agents under Noem’s leadership.

Those shootings were brought up again this week during Noem’s appearances before judiciary committees in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, for instance, repeatedly accused Noem of launching a “smear campaign” against two US citizens shot dead during interactions with immigration agents: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“There have been three homicides in Minneapolis in 2026, and your agents committed two of them,” Raskin told Noem.

He also highlighted comments Noem made calling Good and Pretti “domestic terrorists“, despite evidence undercutting the administration’s depiction of the events leading to their deaths.

“Rather than work with state and local authorities to solve these homicides, you barred Minnesota’s investigators from the crime scenes,” Raskin said.

“It smells like a coverup, and it makes me wonder who the real domestic terrorists are.”

Noem, formerly the Republican governor of South Dakota, has also been scrutinised for a $220m advertising campaign promoting border security.

The advertising campaign shows Noem riding a horse near Mount Rushmore, a well-known national memorial in her home state.

The news outlet ProPublica previously reported that a government contract for the campaign went to a Republican consulting firm with ties to senior DHS officials.

Noem has denied any wrongdoing, stating that the bidding process was “competitive” and that the contract was “all done correctly, all done legally”.

On Thursday, before announcing the staffing change, Trump denied any connection to the advertising campaign, telling the news service Reuters that he “never knew anything about it”.

Noem played a key role in the administration’s mass deportation push, and she has frequently used rhetoric that vilified immigrants as dangerous and violent.

Though DHS’s mandate focuses on domestic security, Noem has made several international trips over the last year, including visits to Ecuador in July and November.

Trump has called a “Shield of the Americas” summit at his Mar-a-Lago estate this weekend, inviting world leaders from multiple countries to discuss regional security and combatting Chinese influence in Latin America.

Noem’s replacement as DHS head, Mullin, has served as a US senator since 2023. He was a representative in the House for a decade before that, representing Oklahoma.

Trump highlighted his membership in the Cherokee Nation, writing that Mullin would be a “fantastic advocate for our incredible Tribal Communities” as DHS leader.

“Markwayne will work tirelessly to Keep our Border Secure, Stop Migrant Crime, Murderers, and other Criminals from illegally entering our Country, End the Scourge of Illegal Drugs and, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” Trump said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON — A federal panel reviewing President Trump’s plans to build a ballroom at the White House has set April 2 for a final vote on the project, the chairman said as the agency prepared to give additional consideration to the construction plans.

Will Scharf, chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission and a top aide to the Republican president, made the announcement Thursday at the start of the panel’s March meeting.

The panel will hear additional details about the project from the White House as well as its own staff, and had been expected to vote on Thursday.

But Scharf announced that the vote was switched to April to give every member of the public who wants to comment a chance to do so. More than 100 people had signed up to comment at Thursday’s meeting, which was being conducted online as a result.

The panel has also been flooded with scores of written comments about Trump’s plans to build a 90,000-square-foot addition where the East Wing of the White House once stood. Trump has said it will cost about $400 million and be paid for with private money. Trump had the East Wing demolished in October.

Scharf said the meeting was being conducted online to ease the public testimony portion, which he said was likely to extend into Friday given the number of people who had signed up to speak.

“They are taking time out of what I presume are busy schedules to join us,” he said. “One way or the other, we are going to make sure that members of the public have the opportunity to be heard on this project.”

Critics of the project have argued that Trump should not have demolished the East Wing until the National Capital Planning Commission and a separate panel, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, had reviewed and voted on his plans. The fine arts panel approved the project last month.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private, nonprofit group, asked a federal judge to temporarily halt construction until the White House submitted the plans both to federal panels and to Congress for approval, and allowed the public to comment.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected the request last week, and the trust has said it plans to file an amended lawsuit.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

The United States-Israeli war with Iran continues to rage, as Washington pledges to send more troops and military assets to the Middle East and Tehran widens its retaliatory strikes across the region.

But on Thursday, top officials under US President Donald Trump shifted focus to another military front: Latin America.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has indicated he plans to exert US dominance over the entire Western Hemisphere. His push for control has coincided with military operations against alleged criminal networks across the region.

At Thursday’s inaugural “Americas Counter Cartel Conference”, speakers such as White House security adviser Stephen Miller assured reporters that Latin America would remain a top military priority for the US, regardless of events in the Middle East.

“We are not going to cede an inch of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or adversaries,” Miller said, adding the US was “using hard power, military power, lethal force, to protect and defend the American homeland”.

Miller further maintained there is no “criminal justice solution” to drug cartels, which he likened to armed groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).

Organised crime, he concluded, “can only be defeated with military power”.

Since Trump took office last year, his administration has applied what experts describe as a “global war on terror” approach to Latin America, including by labelling drug cartels “foreign terrorist organisations”.

Figures like Miller, a key architect behind Trump’s hardline immigration policies, have championed the president’s militaristic approach, even as critics warn it raises human rights and legal concerns.

Last September, for instance, the administration began striking alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, in what rights groups have decried as extrajudicial killings.

And in early January, the US launched an extraordinary operation to abduct Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. It has since pursued a pressure campaign against Cuba designed to weaken its communist government.

Just this week, on Wednesday, the Pentagon announced it had launched joint operations with Ecuador’s military “against Designated Terrorist Organizations” in the South American country.

The announcement indicated a new front for US military actions in the region, which officials have said could include land operations.

But the broadening scope of Trump’s military involvement in Latin America, combined with the nascent war with Iran, has raised questions about the US’s ability to sustain such intense military activity.

Prepared to ‘go on offence alone’

The “Americas Counter Cartel Conference” came as Latin American leaders arrived in South Florida to attend a regional summit hosted by Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Attendees included officials from the Trump-allied conservative governments in Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

But despite support from several regional governments, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth nevertheless told the audience that the US was “prepared to take on” Latin America’s cartels and “go on the offence alone, if necessary”.

“However, it is our preference — and it is the goal of this conference — that, in the interest of this neighbourhood, we all do it together,” Hegseth added.

The secretary also praised Trump’s take on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which sought to establish a US sphere of influence, separate from Europe, in the Western Hemisphere. Administration officials have dubbed Trump’s parallel approach the “Donroe doctrine”.

Hegseth framed the administration’s attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats as a keystone of Trump’s effort to maintain regional influence.

The US military has carried out at least 44 aerial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, resulting in an estimated 150 known deaths.

The identities of the victims have not been released, with several family members saying fishermen and informal workers were among those targeted.

The Pentagon chief said the approach was meant to “establish deterrence”.

“If the consequence was simply to be arrested and then released, well, that’s a consequence they’d already priced in a long time ago,” Hegseth said.

He then pointed to a “few weeks” in February in which there were no strikes on alleged drug boats.

The pause in attacks, he said, was evidence of the strategy’s success. But that break notably came as the US surged assets to the Middle East.

Emphasis on ‘heritage’

Neither Hegseth nor Miller specifically referred to the war with Iran, but the pair touched on themes that have been present in the administration’s messaging on the war.

Trump, for example, said Iran’s government “waged war against civilisation itself”. There have been reports, meanwhile, that US military officials have referenced the biblical “end times” as a religious underpinning for the war.

Those remarks have reflected what critics consider Trump’s embrace of Christian nationalism and his view of the Americas as a European-derived “civilisation” threatened by outside forces.

At Thursday’s conference, Miller himself referenced violence in European history as justification for the modern-day military actions in Latin America.

There were periods in European history throughout the 18th and 19th centuries during which “ruthless means were used to get rid of the people who were raping and murdering and defying established systems of order and justice,” Miller said.

He also echoed Trump’s allegation that Europe was facing “civilisational erasure” as a result of left-wing leadership and immigration.

“The reason why many Western countries are struggling today is they’ve forgotten the eternal truth and wisdoms they once followed,” Miller said.

Hegseth, meanwhile, described all the countries at Thursday’s meeting as “offsprings of Western civilisation”.

Representatives in attendance, he said, faced a test “whether our nations will be and remain Western nations with distinct characteristics, Christian nations under God, proud of our shared heritage with strong borders and prosperous people ruled not by violence and chaos but by law”.

He added that foreign “incursions” represent “existential questions” for the region, seemingly referencing the growing influence of China as an economic and political partner in the Americas.